Shipp: Pollution punishments will cost Georgians plenty

Georgia Power may be a bad corporate citizen, as the Environmental Protection Agency suggests.

Bill

Shipp

And perhaps EPA is right to demand Georgia Power spend millions cleaning up the smoke from a couple of old generating plants, one in Bartow County, the other in Monroe County.

Even if Georgia Power confesses and gets right with the feds, EPA wants to punish the company with painful fines: $25,000 a day at each plant for Clean Air Act violations before Jan. 30, 1997, and $27,000 a day at each plant for violations thereafter.

If the federal courts go along, the cost to Georgia Power will be staggering. In the hundreds of millions of dollars, the company says. That'll teach 'em, right?

Wrong. The cost to you and me will be staggering. In all likelihood, Georgia Power will ask the Public Service Commission to pass along to consumers the high cost of clean smoke. If the PSC's past performances are good indicators, the agency will grant Georgia Power's request.

So much for cheap power.

When the federal Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were enacted three decades ago, some Southern chauvinists charged the new laws were meant to chill economic development in their region.

Not many of us involved in the environmental movement at the time took the anti-Dixie conspiracy seriously. Now it may be time to revisit that notion.

Relatively inexpensive electric energy is a vital part of Georgia's economy. Significant increases in cost are certain to have a negative effect.

Sure, Georgia and the rest of the region must have a clean environment. We owe it to ourselves and our children.

But how much do we benefit from punitive litigation aimed at questionable targets? How much purer will the air be if Georgia Power (and its customers) are taken to the cleaners by EPA and the federal courts?

Georgia Power is already committed to spending $500 million to clean up emissions at five plants in the Atlanta area. The state Environmental Protection Division is pressuring the company to do even more.

The two plants targeted in the EPA lawsuit -- Scherer near Forsyth and Bowen at Cartersville -- have negligible impact on the air quality in the Atlanta region, Georgia Power contends. It will cost at least $857 million to bring those two plants into compliance with EPA demands, adds Georgia Power.

In addition, Georgia Power spokesman Tal Wright says: ''EPA has been fully aware of our repair and maintenance practices over the past 20 years, and EPA has never raised a question with respect to these practices under the Clean Air Act.''

So, why now?

Georgia Power's answer: ''EPA officials, by their recent actions, are attempting to override Congress and, in essence, force utilities to choose between spending hundreds of millions of dollars on additional controls or simply abandon plants that burn coal to produce electricity.''

Abandon coal? Why not? Georgia Power could turn more to nuclear power which is super-clean -- except environmentalists have pressured the government to make the cost of new nuclear plants prohibitive.

The other alternative is to use expensive and not-so-clean oil to generate more energy.

The campaign to protect the environment is admirable. But, at some point, the tax-paying and energy-consuming public may wish to ask: Where does this end? Are barely measurable improvements in air and water quality worth the billions they will cost?

A footnote: Ironically, Georgia Power expanded the capacity of the alleged culprit plants to meet its customers' demands for air conditioning and other ways to improve air quality.

Bill Shipp is editor of Bill Shipp's Georgia, a weekly newsletter on government and business. E-mail: news@billshipp.com.